


Casework

by ashkatom



Series: FBaTNverse [10]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Dolorosa and Redglare, in their relaxing post-saving-the-universe lives, receive a nudge from the New World in the direction of its brooding caverns. In a purely platonic manner, of course. Featuring too many jadebloods, one psionic orangeblood, a moderate amount of trauma, the awkwardness of learning new customs, and the revelation that the New World is still pretty terrible in some respects - but at least, this time, they have the power to make things a bit better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casework

**Author's Note:**

  * For [logicalframework](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=logicalframework).



> **fic warnings** : For all that this fic is adorable, it’s also pretty uncomfortable, and downright dark at moments. If you can’t handle child abuse or trafficking, or abuses of power, you will want to skip this one.
> 
> Also, at this point, I feel I should say: If you're new, hi! You might be able to tell from the rarepair and the series indicator and all, but this fic is the latest in a rather established AU, and kind of spoilery for that AU. Can you read this without prior knowledge? Sure, probably, enjoy the jadeblood worldbuilding. Will the prior knowledge make it better? Absolutely. If you don't want to read all the related works, fear not, you don't have to: The main fic is [Filling Blanks and Taking Names](http://archiveofourown.org/works/338979), it will provide you with all the knowledge you need to really enjoy this fic, and I am informed that it's a pretty fast, fun, and unique read. Enjoy, maybe!

You get to stop and breathe, once you all tumble out into the new world. Most of you need it, at that point. And as odd as it is to not have twelve people camped out on every inch of floorspace your hive possesses, it means you get to grieve in drips and drabs without anyone being overly solicitous at you.

It takes some time to figure out whether you  _should_  grieve. Redglare is - you have come to realise that Redglare has a facade that apparently everyone but you sees, and she has wrapped her grief so thoroughly in control and normalcy that you want to shake her, sometimes. She sleeps, and eats, bathes and cleans and spars, and manages to slide around the issue of her kismesis’ death like breathing. If you happen to catch her in a moment with her fingers pressed under her glasses and her shoulders slumped, the conversation turns to something else.

You hurt, you must admit. Your feelings are thorned and pierce deeply. But Redglare, who has more history and nobody she wants to share it with, may be hurting more - and there is nothing you can do. Nothing that she will  _let_  you do.

It’s almost a relief when the first emergency is dumped in your lap.

For all that you’ve been locked into your own world, the world outside continues to exist outside of your control - and it is wildly different than either of the worlds you have lived in, dynamic and bright and changing. Mostly you’ve been content to ignore it for the few weeks you’ve been here; at some point Dualscar quietly filled your cooling unit with food, and all of you have earned some time off before adjusting  _again_ , you think.

The world has not been ignoring you, you discover, when Redglare walks in one night with the mail in one hand and her cane under the other arm. “You’ve got a letter, Dollface,” she says, extending a pale green envelope in your direction as she leafs through the rest of the mail. “And pizza coupons. We should give them to Dualscar.”

“Perhaps we can ask Psiionic to film the resulting critique,” you say, and slide your thumb under the flap of the envelope. “Goodness knows this world has never seen a seadweller in full snit before.”

You miss Redglare’s reply while reading the letter. “Doll,” said patiently, is the next thing you hear. When you blink and look up, she jerks her head towards the letter. “Bad news?”

“No,” you say, and smooth your thumbs against the paper. “Not - well, I don’t know.” After a moment, you offer her the single page.

Redglare pushes her glasses up to read the page, then folds it precisely along the existing creases. “The caverns?” There is something disappointed and distant in her eyes, another wall slammed down. “When do you leave?”

“I don’t even know-” you protest.

“Dollface,” Redglare says, and the smile on her face is awful. “You couldn’t turn this down if you tried.”

It may be possible that Redglare is not the only one who has an invisible facade.

“Well,” you say, and straighten your shoulders. The thing about grief is that there is always something more important than grief. “How do you feel about an adventure?”

Finally -  _finally!_  - interest sparks in Redglare’s eyes, and her smile becomes a little less false. “The question is how adventure feels about  _us_.”

\--

You have all the time you could possibly need to prepare, but you mastered the art of packing in moments long ago, and with all the others still finding their own place and thus loath to invade yours, there’s nothing tying you to your hive. You message your grubs to tell them that you’ll be away and that the keys are in the usual place, and figure that word will get around on its own well enough.

It feels strange, to be going somewhere without them. At least Redglare is with you, and in better spirits than she was.

“What do you think they want?” she asks, when you’re on the train that is the first leg of the journey. The caverns aren’t as far away as you expected, but it’s still a fair distance to get somewhere reasonably categorised as ‘unpopulated’. Redglare kneels on the seat with her elbows propped against the window, watching the scenery go by; there’s more of it than there was on Alternia, to be fair.

“I don’t know,” you answer, before tearing your eyes away and pulling out the letter once more. “’At your earliest convenience, kindly present yourself...’” The bland note still holds no clues, so you sigh and lean back in your seat. “Perhaps there are laws about jadebloods and brooding caverns here, although how they would have been made aware of my existence...”

Redglare pulls a face. “I forgot how petty the real world could be.”

You blink at her. You’re not certain - you haven’t exactly been counting - but you think that might be the first commentary she’s made on your current living situation.

“Relax, Doll,” she says, and plops back into her seat. With that, she’s sitting at exactly the right angle for the glare of the sun on her glasses to hide her eyes. “I’m adjusting.”

“I’m hardly going to be relaxed while you’re miserable,” you say, and reach out. Redglare settles against your shoulder with a sigh, her defences lowered for once. “You know I’ve been worrying.”

“Because you are a deeply empathic individual.” Redglare smothers a yawn behind a hand. “I need time, is all.”

You bring a hand up to stroke through her hair. You could press further - do you miss Mindfang? do you hate me for helping her death happen? - but for once, you quash your urge to dig. Of course she misses Mindfang -  _you_  miss Mindfang, and you never actually liked her, and if Redglare were to blame you, she’d hardly be here, for all that you worry the opposite. Instead, you say, “You’re going to drool on my shoulder, aren’t you?”

Redglare nuzzles further into your shoulder, pushing her glasses askew in what must be the least comfortable position known to trollkind. “I am  _absolutely_  going to drool on your shoulder,” she mumbles, and curls an arm possessively around your waist. “Wake me up when there’s a jadeblood conspiracy to disband.”

“I’m insulted you think I’d disband a conspiracy without you,” you tell her. She makes a pleased noise in the back of her throat, then falls asleep like she has an off switch. True to her word, she drools on your shoulder.

You carefully slip her glasses off without waking her and settle in for the journey.

\--

The first thing Redglare does when she wakes up is smack herself in the face. It would be cruel of you to laugh, since you’re responsible for her glasses-less state and the sun rose while she was asleep. Despite the sun of this world being a lot more tolerable than Alternia’s sun to your ragtag group, you still seem to have less trouble with it. You’ve certainly not smacked yourself in the face of a morning.

Redglare jams her glasses back on her nose and straightens them while stumbling off the train, her hand on your shoulder the only thing saving her from stumbling into a pole. “I’m awake,” she announces after her stumble, then leans casually against the pole. “Where to next, leader?”

You unfold the note, which is getting well-worn by now. “There’s some sort of shuttle bus, apparently, but it only comes twice a day.” You can’t help the dubious tone that leaks into your voice; on Alternia, someone left the caverns once a month, if that, and only to trade and secure deliveries. The drones took care of most things, leaving your attention on the mother grub.

What is so different here, that their attention can be split like this?

“Anyway, we can walk,” you say, and fold the note again. “It’s not far, and we can follow the road easily enough.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Redglare says, and thrusts her cane through the waistband of her overskirt before heading for the exit. This far out, it’s unattended, only a ticket scanner barring the way. “So what do we do while we walk?”

You take a moment to stretch out hours of sitting in a minimally-padded seat before following her. “Sweat, I imagine.”

Redglare looks back as she slaps her ticket against the scanner. The arch of her eyebrow above her glasses indicates she is unimpressed. “I used to have a dragon,” she informs you. “She was much more entertaining.”

“We’re not setting the countryside on fire,” you tell her, and point down the road in what you are sure is the right direction. “We’ll wait until the return trip for that.”

\--

The road is abandoned this time of day. Your prediction of sweat comes true, sadly. Heat, you’re used to, but the humidity here is stifling, and halfway there you tie your shawl around your head like the headbands you wore when your hair was longer and you were running the length of the caverns every hour. Redglare captchalogues her jacket and overskirt, but doesn’t complain about the heat, earning another point in your heart.

You did a lot of travelling, once it became impractical to stay at your old hive, and then more as Karcin and Pollux and Panthe matured. You still like the heat and sun most of all, the warmth seeping down into your bones and the way everything shines instead of being swathed in shadows. You’ve spent too long shrouded, placed too many walls between you and the world.

You didn’t realise how much you missed it until Redglare dragged you back out.

You’re not the most...  _demonstrative_  person. Redglare seems to love you like breathing, easily batting aside your excuses and respecting your boundaries. You spent a lot of time questioning love - romantic love, because you know without thinking that you would shred yourself again for your grubs, were it necessary - after Mindfang, and how it seems to cost you something now.

Sometimes it’s easy to know when to pay. You stretch out your hand to Redglare and wiggle your fingers until she takes it.

“I’m glad you’re here,” you say, and then add, “With me,” feeling heat unrelated to the sun crawling up your neck.

Redglare stays silent, but squeezes your hand before you can start worrying. Finally, she says, “It’s my job to look at unsavoury truths, Dol.” Her shoulders sink a little, but her hand in yours is firm. You don’t dare adjust your grip. “You left everything for a grub once. Suddenly here’s a new world, and a new opportunity on a silver platter to go back to what you were hatched for, without the reason to leave and with a thousand reasons to stay. And me?” She shrugs. “I don’t know what I’d have to do to be a legislacerator here. I don’t even know what being a legislacerator entails. You’re all I’ve got, for now.”

You stop and wait until Redglare looks at you. “Redglare-”

“Not the most attractive thing I’ve said, I know.” Her hand in yours twitches as she refuses to meet your eyes. “I just - I can’t compete with a place in the world, Dollface. I don’t even know what mine is.”

You take her chin in your free hand and lift it until she’s actually looking at you, despite her sunglasses defeating the gesture somewhat. “If it turns out that we need to go to the legislacerative caverns-”

Redglare snorts, despite herself.

“-Then we’ll go,” you say. “Simple as that. You  _are_  my place.”

Redglare takes your other hand and presses her face into it, a smile hiding in there somewhere. “There’s nothing you can’t solve, is there, Dollface?”

“I wouldn’t know,” you say, primly. “ _I_  don’t have legislacerator training. There is a reason I keep you around.”

Mindfang - it’s quickly becoming clear that Spinneret Mindfang is still a spectre in both your lives, but it’s only natural, considering. But if you can still rely on Redglare, and she can rely on you, well. You’ve faced worse, together.

\--

When you get to the caverns, there’s a trail of sweat down your back and you’re feeling much better after having spent a couple hours walking under the sun. Redglare seems to feel similarly, if her grin is any indication.

“So do we knock?” Redglare asks, at the unassuming entrance to the caverns.

“There were door guards in my day.” You run your hand through your hair to get it out of your eyes, while considering the situation. “Well, this world doesn’t seem like the type to murder first, and I want some water. Shall we?”

Redglare gestures with her cane. “After you.”

The path down isn’t as dark as you’d imagined - for all that you disapprove of their modus operandi so far, they’ve done well with the cavern, cutting careful shafts for natural light through to the surface. The stairs are even and seem well-maintained, and you have no trouble picking your way down. Your feet almost seem to be operating on the memory of sweeps and sweeps ago, for all that your own stairs were much more worn and liable to tripping you up no matter how many times you’d climbed them.

The stairs lead to a small chamber, hollowed out by psi rather than any natural methods. Your first surprise is an orangeblood sitting at the desk there, staring so intently at her monitor that she jumps a metre in the air and knocks over her seat when you clear your throat.

“Please tell me you’re real,” she says, ignoring her chair in favour of staring at you pleadingly. “I haven’t been awake long enough for you  _not_  to be real this time.”

You exchange glances with Redglare.

“We’re at least sixty percent real,” Redglare says.

“I will take that,” the orangeblood informs you, then vaults her desk instead of walking around it. Behind her, her chair rights itself, and none of the papers on her desk so much as rustle. “Capela Ayyukh. You look experienced. Are you experienced?”

Perhaps you have been dropped in the set of a movie, and the script was lost in the mail. “I beg your pardon?” you finally manage, while Redglare does her level best to suppress a smirk from climbing to her eyebrows.

“You did get a letter, right?” Capela gestures to her desk, and a note identical to the one you received shoots to her hand. “I’m sorry if you were just caught on holiday or something, but over half of our people are out, and we’re desperate.”

“Your people,” you echo.

“Our Superior is stuck down south,” Capela says, ticking this incidence off on her fingers. “We’ve always been short-staffed a bit - this is a small cavern, we can usually get away with a skeleton crew - but then one of the Initiates caught some human disease and passed it around before she realised, and now three of them can’t get out of the ‘cupe if there’s a drone chasing them. And on top of that, one of the two Daughters broke her leg and isn’t up to anything except labwork.” She shrugs. “We’ve got four runners left, and they’re not exactly the cream of the crop, you know what I mean.”

The situation is starting to become slightly clearer. You’ve never  _heard_  of a brooding cavern devolving into such a shambles, but if a cavern on Alternia had been short-staffed, it was because people were dead. At least this seems recoverable. “And you?” you ask, rolling up your sleeves in resigned preparation. You can’t walk away from this disaster.

“Do I look green?” Capela asks. “I file things.”

You decide not to touch that one. “It also seems like you know this place well, so you can run me through where everything is.”

Capela sighs. “Can’t leave the desk. Having so few people means emergency protocols, which means I’m the point of contact. I signalled the Daughters when you showed up, but, well, broken leg and useless Initiates. It might be a while.”

“I’ll mind the desk,” Redglare says, jolting you out of Business Mode. “You can hand Dollface off to one of hers and get back easily enough, and I am very good at looking official and pointing people at an exit if there is a fire.”

Capela looks her up and down. “Aren’t you a little overqualified for administration, legislacerator?”

“You would not believe how good I am at administration,” Redglare says, and squeezes your shoulder before walking around the desk and plopping into Capela’s chair. “That’s the one where you make legislacerators get a warrant for everything, if I remember correctly.”

“Well, it’s more training than I got,” Capela says after a moment, then shrugs before picking a clipboard and pen off her desk and handing it to you. “We can walk and do paperwork, I guess.”

You look over your shoulder to see Redglare already rummaging surreptitiously through all the drawers of Capela’s desk. She flicks you a thumbs-up without looking, and you ask Capela about one of the mortality clauses on the third page to make sure she doesn’t look back.

It’s good to know that you’re not the only one feeling suspicious.

\--

The lab, at least, is something you’re a little more used to. The jadeblood sitting in a corner with at least two husktops around her and a tablet in her lap, crutches propped in the corner beside her, trips you up a little, but only because you were starting to think you were the only jadeblood in this world despite the internet informing you otherwise.

“Hey, Nahran!” Capela knocks on the wall, since the door is wide open. “Got you help.”

Nahran looks up, and you blink. One of her eyes is jade, but the other is a shocking bright blue unrelated to any category of the haemospectrum. “Oh, good,” she says, and turns back to her work. You use the time to make sure your face isn’t frozen in a polite rictus, and resolve to get your hands on the genetics standards manuals in effect on this world before you make an idiot of yourself. “Can you hand me that datagrub, Help?”

Perhaps you should have left the hive more often.

“Nahran will send you running anywhere you need to go.” Capela takes the clipboard back and flicks through it. “Sign here, unless you don’t want overtime credits.” She waits for you to sign, then tucks the clipboard under her arm. “I assume the legislacerator who thinks she’s funny is staying?”

“She tends to,” you say, and hand the datagrub to Nahran. “You can probably convince her to run around and lift heavy things if you ask nicely.”

“Noted,” Capela says. The heels of her shoes click on the stone floor as she leaves, and you start searching the shelves of reference books in the room for something that will make you feel like you know what you’re doing.

“Do you have a name that isn’t Help?” Nahran asks, just as you find the abridged version of a twenty-year plan that looks promising in telling you what population distribution you’re aiming for, at the very least.

You sigh and look down at the coil-bound pages in your hands, so you don’t have to watch the typical jadeblood reaction to your title. “Dolorosa.”

“Huh,” Nahran says, after a long pause. “What’d you do to get landed with a title like that?”

You look over your shoulder, startled. Apparently your title doesn’t have quite the same connotations as it did on Alternia. It felt like the whole world knew exactly what you did, sometimes.

“Well, whatever. The background check would have turned it up if you’d murdered anyone.” Before you can answer, she waves a hand at the shelves beside you. “Grab me the report on deliberate psi exposure to your right?”

You find it and hand it to her, and she flicks through to a highlighted section before pulling a pencil out of her hair and noting something in the margins, tongue between her teeth. “Knew someone who got landed with ‘The Grieving’ once,” she remarks. “Melodramatic fucker.”

You hesitate for a moment, but - well, you’re back in the caverns, and once this emergency is over you’re not likely to see these people again. “Perhaps Aneith would work better,” you say, attempting to be dry and resulting in barely hiding the crack your voice makes on the second syllable of your name.

“Sure,” Nahran says, attention back on one of her husktops. “Could you tell an Initiate I need more samples of batch AE-7? Out that door there and down the hall. There should be at least one of them hanging around the freezers.”

You nod and prepare to get horribly lost trying to find the freezers. It’s practically cavern tradition.

“Hey!” When you turn around, Nahran is holding out one of her crutches. “Poke them along with this if they get rowdy.” When your mouth twitches, she grins. “We’ll work on your sense of humour.”

\--

By the time your shift is declared over, you’ve learned enough about these caverns to not feel like a freshly-hatched Initiate. You even work up enough courage to ask Nahran for some basic texts - to refresh your memory, you tell her, but casually glide past her implied question of when you’re refreshing from. She loads you up with reports and studies from the last two sweeps, but looks blankly at you with her mismatched eyes when you request an up-to-date Standards Manual.

“Like, Health and Safety?” she ventures, after a moment.

“Yes,” you say, after another awkward moment wherein you try to figure out why a Health and Safety Standards Manual would exist. “Please.”

“Well, it never really changes, but...” She hops up on her good leg and pats at the shelf above her, finally pulling down a thin booklet that she has to blow dust off before adding it to the pile in your arms. “At least you’re doing your due diligence.”

“I believe it was in the contract,” you say, dryly. “The nutritionblock sink may well have been in there with it.”

Nahran grins as she sits down again, gingerly. “That’s Capela. She’s a blessing. If you go back out to her, she’ll point you in the direction of the mess, ablutions, or respiteblocks as you will. Cleaning rosters are in the mess, but you can worry about that tomorrow. We make the Initiates do most of it, anyway.”

“I remember.” You shift your load of readings to your hip. “What about you? You’ve been working longer than I have.”

“Caphir - the other Daughter - will take over soon. She’s just stuck with all the running around, so we trade off a bit differently now.” She stretches, then shoos you. “Go eat, it’s probably illegal if you don’t.”

You salute with your free hand and head off to find food. Now that Nahran mentions it, you’re starving.

\--

Capela’s on the phone when you find your way back to her hub. She draws her finger in a circle, creating a little ball of light, then motions for you to follow it down one of the branches. All the time, she manages to continue making noises of acknowledgement and take notes on a tablet, and you have to jog after her psionic guide because you get distracted watching her be efficient.

You’re not quite sure what to think of her.

Redglare’s in the mess when you get there. She doesn’t look bored, exactly, prodding at her palmtop, but you do feel guilty about leaving her alone all this time. It’s been a difficult experience to acclimate to for you, and you were born in this environment.

She sees you and puts down her palmtop, the tired smile that only you’ve seen pulling at her lips. “Dollface,” she says, as you drop your burden on the table beside her, “you would not believe the things I have been lifting.”

“Welcome to the caverns,” you say, and eye the seat across from her longingly. If you sit down you’ll never get up again. “What’s on the menu?”

“I sat down,” Redglare says. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to develop psionic powers by wanting them really hard yet.”

You know a chance to be a hero when you see it. The buffet on the other side of the room is unattended, although you imagine the Initiates are tasked with rotating the food through appropriately. When you lift the lid on one pot, you find cluckbeast and wheatstrand stew, and it smells good enough that you don’t bother checking the others. Breadrolls are at the end of the table, and you snag two of those as well, before bringing the food back for you and your worn-out, pitiable matesprit to devour.

“Mfff,” Redglare says, half a breadroll stuffed in her mouth. “Flufthed for you.” You’re not certain if she’s talking to you or the stew, but since your mouth is just as full, you don’t think it matters much.

After inhaling the first bowl and fetching refills for the both of you, you manage to slow down enough to actually talk to your companion in crime. “Did you find anything?” you ask, between spoonfuls of stew.

“Rosa!” Redglare drops her spoon in shock. “Accusing me of dubiously-lawful searching? I’m hurt!” She flips her palmtop around to face you and you pick it up, unlocking it with a swipe of your thumb. “I certainly didn’t take photos. That would be very distrustful of me.”

“You are the most trusting person I know,” you say, and start flicking through her photos.

The most recent ones are of the caverns’ layout, pieced together as Redglare walked through them. She has inside shots of the three main storage caves - non-perishable food, bottled water in case of emergency, and supplies for the communal blocks. There are spare generic jadeblood uniforms in the latter, and you make a note to pick some up. They can be altered to fit you better, and you stand out a little too much in all your layers, despite how cool the caverns are.

Branching away from that, you see a simple double-door marked around the rim with jade. The mothergrub would be beyond it, you know - and you have to stop and blink for a moment, with memories of your lusus and the mothergrub you served before you left. There’d be a wash-up station inside, before the brooding cavern proper, but when you keep looking through the photographs, there are no interior shots. Redglare must have been spared that particular honour.

Further on loops back around to the freezers and cold storage, and from there you know that the path rejoins the lab you and Nahran spent your first shift in. From that, you can surmise that the respiteblocks are out the other passage from the nutritionblock you’re in.

“It’s small,” you say, hitching up your sleeve as you flick back and forth to memorise the paths. “The caverns, on Alternia - they were a hundred times this size. This couldn’t put out more than five hundred grubs. We  _needed_  all the jadebloods, then.”

Redglare found a toothpick while you were looking through her photographs of the caverns, and she pauses in her picking now to shrug. “We’re not maintaining such a massive population now. And maybe they decentralised, some.”

You suppose that you’re not having to make a fresh crop to go into space and expand the borders of the Empire every sweep, but it’s another difference, and another discomfort. You keep looking through the photos, back to when Redglare was minding the desk. There are profiles of each of the regular workers, although you have to squint as Redglare’s camera isn’t the best.

The absent Superior’s salary makes you whistle. “Nobody was getting that many credits in our brooding caverns.”

“Mmh.” Redglare leans forward, chin on her hand. “I don’t know if it means anything yet. Doubt she could have been bribed to leave, though.”

You raise an eyebrow - something seems off here, but it’s looking more and more like it can be explained away as the Game’s lingering traces as it shoehorns you into this world. Still, you flick through the rest, briefly scanning the profiles of the Initiates and Daughter you didn’t meet. Nahran’s profile tells you no more than spending ten hours with her did.

“Explain the structure to me, Dol,” Redglare says, still leaning on her hand. Her eyes, which you can only just make out behind her glasses, are far away.

“It’s simple enough,” you say, setting the palmtop down. “Though I don’t know how things may have changed. As I know it, there’s one Superior per cavern - they oversee all the high-level planning, and deal with - dealt with - implementing Condesce’s orders on the long term.” You wonder who’s in charge of that now. You think there might be a Council, but, well. You’ve neglected a lot, about learning this new world. “The Daughters are a step down and oversee the practical implementation, and the Initiates fetch and carry and learn.”

Redglare drums the fingers of her free hand on the table, the sound muffled by her gloves. Her thoughtful expression hasn’t budged an inch. “Are there hierarchies within the ranks?”

“Unofficial.” You match her pose unconsciously, then smile when you realise. “Partly based on age, partly on favour, partly on achievement.”

“Like everywhere else, then,” Redglare says, and picks up her palmtop again, looking at the photographs of the Initiates. “Turnover?”

“Death and promotions, mostly.” Redglare looks at her screen, and you watch Redglare. Belatedly, you add, “This world is very different in that respect, I think.”

“No respect for a good murder,” Redglare says, her legislacerator smile baring her teeth. “Three of these Initiates are new, Dol, is that normal?”

“No, not at all.” You frown. “I was adopted into my caverns when I was six. We all were, and we stayed until, well, death or promotion.”

“Or mysterious acts of grub.” Redglare turns the screen of her palmtop off and stretches. “I’ll talk to them. I’m very friendly.”

You get up and take your dishes to the industrial sink. Presumably an Initiate will wash and sterilise them - ah. The duty rosters. When you look at them, Redglare has already penned in her name - in teal ink, which makes you smile - once for each chore. You do the same, in the spirit of not having the people you’re stuck with murder you and use your remains to clean the ablutions chambers.

“The respiteblocks are that way,” Redglare points. “Our names are on the door of ours. I’m going to go talk to these-”

You place a hand over her mouth. “You’re going to sleep,” you inform her, gently. “Apart from your nap, you’ve been awake as long as I have, and worked harder. It’s been a long night.”

“Day,” Redglare says around your hand, then sighs, her shoulders drooping. “I shouldn’t have taken on a level-headed partner.”

“Flushed for you, too,” you say, and let her lead you to the respiteblocks.

\--

You should have bathed, before going to sleep, but your day hit you all at once and it was all you could do to shuck your clothes and crawl into the ‘cupe. Now, you’re sweaty  _and_  sticky, and you deeply regret your lack of foresight.

Redglare’s still asleep when you crawl out of the ‘cupe. A small ablutions chamber joins your respiteblock and another, but the other respiteblock is unoccupied, leaving you the sole user of said chamber. You’re more than fine with that, with your memories of being an Initiate and a life spent hiding in places without adequate plumbing. You like hot water.

A look in the storage cubbies gives you clean, one-fit clothes, which will do until you can fetch one of the spare uniforms in your size from the storage chambers proper. The sleeveless top bares your arms, so you wrap your shawl around yourself before leaving.

You feel a bit less like an outsider, clad in their clothes.

Redglare, only just waking up from your absence, whistles sleepily at you. “I like a woman in camouflage.”

“You like a woman in anything,” you say, and dump your sweat-soaked clothes in the only hamper in the bare-bones room.

“I like  _you_  in anything,” she corrects you, and heaves herself out of the sopor, sitting on the edge of the ‘cupe to scrape most of it back in. “How long until we’re expected?”

You check your palmtop. “Two hours.”

“Good.” De-slimed as much as she can, Redglare walks on her tiptoes to the ablutions chamber. “Wait for me to get breakfast, Dollface?”

“Of course.” You settle into one of two chairs at a small table in an alcove by a window, and pick up the first from your stack of readings. It’s some time before sunset, so you have more than enough light for reading. After reading the abstract, you sigh and dig through your captchalogue deck until you find a highlighter. You hope there’s coffee at breakfast.

\--

The nutrition block, abandoned before you slept, is full of jadebloods now. Nahran is there, her crutches leaned against the table, talking to two very tired Initiates. The other Daughter, Caphir, looks equally tired, as she scrapes a spoon through a bowl of stew - beef, this time, it seems. Capela is there too, wolfing down griddle cakes and scrolling through a tablet. Everyone pauses to look at the two of you when you enter, and Nahran waves like you’re at opposite ends of a landing ground.

Redglare nudges the small of your back. “I’ll get food. Go camouflage.”

“Do find me with the food,” you murmur back. “I’m the one with the hooked horn.”

Redglare snorts and nudges you again. You sit in the open spot next to Nahran, across from an Initiate you haven’t met. You think the two you have met might still be sleeping.

“Aneith!” Nahran says, full of cheer that you think is at least forty percent caffeine. “Meet these particular Initiates. One’s Khamsa, one’s Zaniah, they are both here to be worked until the flesh falls off their bones.”

“I think mine did already,” one of them - Khamsa, you think, from the profiles you looked at yesterday - says, and sprawls over the table. “You might want to be careful with the stew.”

“You make a lovely skeleton,” Nahran says, patting Khamsa’s shoulder. “We’ll use you to teach anatomy.”

“Where’d you come from?” Zaniah, the more awake of the pair, asks. Khamsa turns her head so that she, too, can pay attention to your answer. Caphir perks up a little, showing signs of life instead of reanimated undeath.

“Oh, up north,” you say, vaguely. Redglare clatters into the seat next to you with an armload of food, saving you further questioning.

“Nahran, why do we have a legislacerator?” Caphir asks. Her voice alone makes you want to bundle her into a ‘cupe and tell her to not leave for a month.

“I’m investigating these griddle cakes,” Redglare says. Caphir blinks at her, then shrugs and turns her attention back to her own plate. You think Redglare could have said, ‘What legislacerator?’ and Caphir would have accepted it, the state she’s in.

Nahran stretches. “Right, you two, duty and sleep. Scat.” When Khamsa and Zaniah take their time, she picks up one of her crutches, and they find enough energy to scramble out of poking range. Caphir, unfortunately, has no such reflexes, and gets several pokes before she swats the crutch away. “I’ll cover your duty,” Nahran says. “Go get some sleep.”

Caphir finishes chewing, then pushes herself out of her chair. “Don’t forget batch DL-138. Three hours.”

“I’ve got it.” Nahran stretches to give Caphir one last prod. “Go. Sleep. I’m exhausted looking at you.”

“Love you too, Nahr,” Caphir says, swatting the cane away. “Don’t mess up my files.”

“Don’t get slime everywhere,” Nahran retorts, a light flush in her cheeks. She darts a glance at you as Caphir walks away and says, “We work together fine.”

You shrug. It’s a little alarming that they’re the only two Daughters here, but your caverns were full of dark corners, and they were thoroughly taken advantage of. If it was ever a problem, a culling sorted it out and made sure that nobody was likely to make it a problem again.

You imagine the deterrent here would be less fatal. You can’t say you disapprove.

Capela finishes her griddle cakes. “Are you going to need the legislacerator, Nahran?”

“I feel very unique here,” Redglare says,  _sotto voce_.

“Not if Syrmah and Almuri show up any time soon.” Nahran hauls herself up and puts her crutches under her arms, wincing a bit as they take her weight. “If you’re still eating when they get here, tell them to move it.”

Capela waves her fork in acknowledgement, her mouth full.

“I’ll find you when I’ve finished,” you tell Nahran. Your plate is already half-empty; someone here is a good cook, which you’re grateful for. You suffered through two years of having everything overcooked at your caverns before someone finally assassinated the Daughter that was in charge of the mess.

“What do you need me for?” Redglare asks, neatly dissecting her griddle cakes.

Capela stretches. Her plate is a mess of syrup and cream, but none of it made it onto her clothing, despite her one-handed eating. “Everyone pulls their weight here,” she says, but with as little antagonism as is possible. “The storage caverns are still abysmal, and I have a filing system I want to implement that should make primary research more efficient.”

“This is going to be tedious, isn’t it?” Redglare asks.

Capela grins, a thin slice across her face. “Extremely.”

\--

You fall into the rhythm of the caverns quickly enough, once Nahran figures out how to use you. You’re doing all the cruder tasks in the lab – hauling around samples, mixing together initial test trays, pacing between the centrifuge and the titration equipment, searching for the characteristics you need. Nahran does the finer tasks, working with the pairings you’ve narrowed down and attempting to replicate population goals on a small scale – and she gets increasingly focussed on the work as a week passes and Caphir reports that the mother grub is showing the early signs of brooding. You only have so much time before your window passes.

“It’s impossible!” Nahran finally growls, knocking her mouse away before slumping and rubbing her eyes. “I can’t make the percentages work with what I’ve got, I  _can’t_ , the Superior can  _bite me_  if she ever comes back-”

You hitch your load of trays higher on your hip and stop to peer over her shoulder. “What’s the problem?”

“We’re too concentrated around blue-purple in our collection area, and upstairs wants forty percent red-orange and as much psionic potential as we can finagle.” Nahran pulls up a spreadsheet and quickly makes charts for you. “This is the best ratio I’ve been able to come up with, and it’s not even close.”

“Why so many psionics?” you ask, putting your trays down and taking control of the mouse. Nahran’s base mixes are fine, as far as you can tell – she’s optimised each instead of waiting and optimising the final result, probably as a desperate last measure, but you pull up the contributor attributes in case there’s any wriggle room there anyway.

Nahran leans forward to watch your work. “I dunno. Building boom predicted over the next eight sweeps, I guess. They were making noise about population growth on the news.”

“Hrn,” you say, more to acknowledge that she replied than because you’re listening. The catchment area for these caverns is so small; there’s going to have to be significant population turnover if they want a diverse lot of grubs, because it’s not going to happen with what they’re getting. “Did the guidelines specify lowblooded psionics?”

Nahran’s eyes dart towards you, alarmed, before she looks back at the monitor and swallows. “Uh, no, they didn’t specify warmblooded, it’s just that the rate is unpredictable in coolbloods.”

You bite your tongue and do your best to not spontaneously disappear thanks to embarrassment. Some of the Church of the Signless that sprang up once Sufferer died adopted the more neutral terms, but Sufferer - and, hence, the rest of you - never did. His use of ‘lowblood’ was an upraised middle finger to the world that hurled it at him, however, and it makes sense that this world has adopted the more egalitarian terms.

“I apologise,” you say, and then quickly highlight a range of cells so that the two of you can move on without making more of a fuss. “Look, though - these generational results. Combine batches HJ-34 and HK-1 and there’s a decent chance of some recessional psionic genes showing through.”

“Hunh.” Nahran leans closer to the monitor, eyebrows drawing into a frown. “I could have sworn we had enough coolblood mixes to drown that out.” She picks up some of yesterday’s printouts and flicks through them, before pulling out a summary. “Yeah, here the coolblood grub expectancy is nearly double, look.” She waves the page in your direction and leans back in towards the monitor, frown in full force as she scrolls down columns. “These numbers seem to add up, though. Maybe Caphir didn’t log all her trials.”

You pluck the page from Nahran’s hand and scan it, a matching frown appearing on your face.  _Something_  is off here. As surreptitiously as you can, you fold it and slip it into your pocket while Nahran’s distracted. “Well, it’s worth a trial, at least,” you say, briskly moving the conversation on as you pick up a pallet of samples and balance them against your hip. “I’ll send Syrmah with the samples.”

Nahran waves you off, still intently studying the numbers you highlighted.

Redglare is, conveniently, in one of the storage rooms en route to the sample storage facilities, along with an entire factory’s worth of discrete data units that need to be verified, labelled, and re-sorted. As far as you can tell, she doesn’t seem to mind the work. She looks up when you come in and plugs another data unit into her - or, well, the cavern’s - husktop while you carefully balance your pallet on a pile of the unsorted units.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Dollface?” she asks, uncapping a marker and writing a series of numbers on the edge of her data unit before unplugging it again.

You pull out the page and smooth it open before handing it over. “I don’t know how much sense this is going to make to you, but-”

“I get the gist,” Redglare says, scanning it over. “What’s wrong with it, specifically?”

You crouch beside her nest in the middle of towers of data units so you can read over her shoulder. “I’m not entirely certain, but my educated guess is on the numbers being wrong. I don’t know where, and I don’t know why.”

“Helpful,” Redglare says, but presses your hand to her lips to take the sting out of it. “I’ll see what can be found in my castle of records.”

\--

Redglare is withdrawn and thoughtful at dinner, and you do your best to draw the conversation and give her the room for thinking she needs. It’s not difficult, with the caverns as tightly-woven as they are. No system is perfect, but most jadebloods on Alternia grew up learning cues of when to give their cohort distance and when to draw them out, learning the behaviours of those around them until responding appropriately was second nature, and it seems to be no different here. Caphir even gently herds the Initiates, whose collective fascination with A Real Legislacerator hasn’t worn off, along your conversational gambits, and winks at you when they’re not looking.

You missed the caverns, you must admit. For all that this one is subtly wrong, somehow, when it works it feels like home.

Redglare does the dishes after the meal, crossing her name off the roster for the week and then losing herself in the repetitive motions. You don’t know if anyone else could tell how lost in thought she is, but with her movements slow and methodical instead of sharp and efficient, she drifts through the chores so silently that you lose track of her presence, something normally impossible with the Neophyte Redglare. When she grasps your shoulder as you’re scrubbing a patch of sauce near the stove - you were down on the roster for cleaning, and the nutritionblock is alarmingly grimy for a block that gets cleaned so often - you jerk in surprise and almost bash your horns on the stove handle.

“Easy, Dol,” Redglare says, hand on your shoulder to steady you. “You nearly done?”

You look at the sauce and decide that the stain is never coming out, and probably adds character. “I’m done,” you tell Redglare, straightening up and tossing your brush in the sink. She links her fingers through yours and tugs you along to your respiteblock before you can find your feet.

“I take it you found something,” you say, as you close the door behind you.

“Capela keeps her passwords  _written down_ ,” Redglare says, darkly. “Also a rather alarming trend of poorly-covered-up faked records.”

The frown you’d been fighting off since turning the matter over to Redglare comes back full force. “Faked-  _why_? There’s no purpose to it if taking inventory just disproves the numbers, and it’s not like inventory would be an onerous task in a cavern this small.”

Redglare throws herself into a chair and pulls off her glasses. Her expression is carefully neutral, which sends more of a chill down your spine than if she had been outwardly worried. “The Superior’s salary and absence, this number-fudging... It’s not good, Dollface.”

You let that take over the room for a moment, drawing out the chair beside Redglare’s and easing yourself into it. “We’re here,” you say, finally. “If we notice something...”

If you notice something, you don’t know what you’ll do. You had some authority in your own caverns, before you left; enough to make dealing with problems a rather simple affair. If it was beyond your pay grade, it got passed upwards to someone you trusted to deal with it. Now, you’re guests, and none of the rules you know apply. With a problem of the scale Redglare is hinting at, your solution was generally swift, brutal, and accepted. Here, you imagine there’s a process.

You spent most of your life becoming a guardian; not dealing with problems in a permanent manner meant that you were failing your duty. Now, your skillset is obsolete.

“We’ll work it out,” your mouth says, ahead of your mind by miles.

“About that,” Redglare says, still in her neutral voice. She looks away for a moment, then visibly steels herself and meets your eyes. “I’m going away.”

Stunned, all you can do is blink at her.

“I’m useless here, Dol,” she says, raising her hands in a shrug. “I look like a legislacerator, and I talk like a legislacerator...”

You nod, slowly. It’s been easy enough for you to fake your way back into your job thanks to caste dynamics, but Redglare’s vocation requires that she has proof of her authority, and her facade will crumble rather spectacularly if she’s hauled up before the law in the process of doing her own hauling. “So we’re visiting the legislacerative caverns?” you ask, hooking the corner of your mouth up into a teasing smile.

“Dol,” she says, and something in her expression crumples. She runs a hand down her face before looking levelly at you again. “ _I’m_  going to the legislacerative caverns.”

“Oh,” you say. The space between you fills up with silence.

She reaches out and takes your hand - Redglare, who is so careful about being invited, who took a full season to touch you casually, squeezes your fingers tightly and begs your understanding with her eyes. “It has nothing to do with a desire to leave you behind, Dollface. This is just- I need to do this, so I’m going.”

Redglare has given you her whole-hearted support before, at great cost to herself. You owe her nothing less, even if your thoughts are whispering to you that it is your fault, that she is separating from you for her own good. You push those thoughts, and their basis in fear, as far back as you can, and sigh as you squeeze her hands back. “As long as you come back in one piece,” you say.  _Back to me_ , you don’t add.

All of the tension leaves Redglare’s body in one abrupt moment, her hands going slack with relief in yours. “I can’t promise one,” she says, leaning in and tilting her head back in clear invitation. “I may get some new scars for you to swoon over.”

“The word is ‘fret’,” you tell her, and untangle your hands so you can draw her into the kiss properly.

There may be problems that the two of you need to throw yourselves at. There will, you suspect, always be problems. So long as she wants to come back, you don’t care. You’ve handled worse.

\--

Redglare leaves early the next evening, leaving you sad and Capela utterly distraught. At first, you’re suspicious that Capela is involved with whatever’s going on - but ten minutes of her crying into your collar convince you that, no, she really is just sad about losing a competent assistant.

It takes a while longer, a cup of tea, and several tissues, but Capela both calms down and manages to explain that before she joined the caverns, the records were in such disarray that she had honestly contemplated burning them all and starting over, and after two sweeps the end was finally in sight - which makes her upset at Redglare leaving more understandable, at least. You’re still not sure if you should delicately mention that Redglare has no moirail or buy her a labelmaker, though.

Nahran cheerfully grabs the back of your collar and swings along, hobbling with one crutch faster than you can walk with both uninjured feet, as soon as Capela is pacified, dragging you in her wake. “Time to introduce you to Alawah.”

“I thought I met everyone,” you say, following Nahran and straightening out your uniform. “Is it one of the sick Initiates? I haven’t caught all their names.”

“Not quite,” Nahran says, and stops outside the jade-bordered door that you’ve almost managed to tune out in your daily ventures around the caverns. “Alawah is our mothergrub. Give me your arm, would you?” You steady her as she fishes a card out from her pocket and presses it against a reader inset in the wall. The door hisses open and she swings herself through, making you take a jerky step to keep up. “Scrub up,” she says, and points. “Station there, robes, masks, gloves there.”

You wash your hands in the familiar pattern -  _this_  much soap, water  _this_  hot, for  _this_  long, up to the elbow - before pulling on scrubs, gloves, a hairnet, and a mask. It’s not so different from the active work in the lab, although it’s not normally needed outside of brooding season. During season, though, you want to make sure that no foreign material can contaminate the mothergrub or slurry.

Nahran, a paper cover over her lone crutch, opens the inner door as soon as you’re ready, and carefully picks her way inside. The stone floor is a lot rougher, more natural, in the brooding cavern itself, and you can see her wince whenever she misjudges a patch of floor and her crutch slips a little. “Caphir’s been tending Alawah, mostly,” she tells you, leading you towards the back of the cave. “But she can’t do everything, so.”

You may as well be deaf, for all that you’re hearing of Nahran. Alawah comes into sight, and you all but run up to her, pressing your hands against her flank. She gusts out a breath, affectionate because she’s never learned that trolls are danger, and you lean in further to press your cheek against her as well. She’s cool to the touch, and smells like home, and you didn’t realise how much you missed your lusus until right now.

“Hello,” you whisper to her, closing your eyes. Tears fall when you do, but you’re not paying attention to that. “I’m Aneith,” you tell her, and she relaxes even more at the sound of your voice, going back to snuffling at the floor in the off chance that food has appeared.

“Aneith?” Nahran asks

You open your eyes reluctantly. “It’s been a long time,” you offer as explanation, wiping your eyes with your shoulder since you don’t want to put on new gloves - although you pretty much blew the contamination rules out of the water with the skin-to-skin contact from your face.

Nahran’s curiosity is written all over her face, but she shrugs and moves on, and if you didn’t like her already from hours upon hours trapped in the lab together, that would cinch it. “We’re going to start feeding slurry tomorrow, so we have to inspect the cave to make sure it’s suitable - you get to do that, since you have two feet - and we have to make sure that she’s doing okay. Shouldn’t take long.”

Your sweep of the cave turns up four crevices that grubs could possibly lodge themselves in, so you mark those for filling and double-check for sharp edges at grub level while Nahran finishes up. In the time it took you to check over the cave, she’s coaxed Alawah into having eyes, mouth, and extremities checked for any abnormalities, and is now carefully negotiating sample collections. You do your last check, and then go make yourself useful by holding the sample box.

“Which slurry version did you end up approving?” you ask, in an attempt to dispel some of the awkwardness that comes from administering grub gynaecology.

“A modified version of the one you pointed me towards,” Nahran says, sealing a sample swab in a test tube and dropping it into your box before unwrapping another swab. “Caphir was a bit hesitant, but it’s our best shot at meeting the quotas, and if it doesn’t work, well. It’s not like this is an exact science, anyway.”

You make a noise of agreement as Nahran seals up her last sample and hauls herself upright. “Well, to the labs,” she says, shouldering a bag of equipment and picking her lone crutch off the wall. “Try to not fall behind as I speed my way there.”

\--

You and Redglare exchange messages over Trollian whenever one of you has some downtime - which is, sadly, rare. You have no idea what Redglare is doing about her legislacerator status - you edge around the topic, in fact, keeping your messages short and caring and metaphorically jamming a knuckle in your mouth whenever it feels like you’re getting too close to being a burden rather than a support - and going into production mode in the caverns is sucking up any time you don’t carefully account for. Nahran is practically drinking coffee through an IV, and you see Caphir regularly despite her being on the opposite shift. The Initiates are all exhausted, and more than once you’ve come across Almuri or Khamsa curled up in one of the storage rooms, palmtop alarm set for ten minutes.

Letting them nap seems the kindest path. You remember your Initiate days, and ten minutes here or there isn’t going to break the schedule irrevocably.

You and Caphir are the ones to feed Alawah the first batch of slurry, and to sit with her afterwards. At first, it’s exciting, but as always the excitement fades when the idea of the potential wears off and Alawah is just a mothergrub eating genetic slurry.

“Welcome back to the glamorous world of feeding giant grubs genetic material,” Caphir says, leaning back against the wall of the cave and wiping her forehead. She’s been awake for at least thirty hours, her hair is a mess, and her hands are shaking a little since she couldn’t exactly bring a bottle of coffee - a habit she and Nahran apparently share - into the cave with her, but for all that, she looks exhaustedly exultant. “I hope it’s everything you ever wished for.”

You sit beside her, probably not looking any better. “It’s been strange working without a Superior,” you say, cautiously.

Caphir blows a raspberry. “If you’d seen my email exchanges with her trying to get to quota, you’d agree that this is better.”

“She’s bad?” you ask, honest surprise colouring your voice. Bad Superiors never got the opportunity to stick around, on Alternia. Your caverns had gone through three in the time you were there simply because several of the Initiates preferred a different filing system to the Empire standard and neither side would bend.

Caphir looks up at the ceiling and screws her mouth to the side in thought. “Well, not  _bad_ , but... Intuitive.” At your blank look, she adds, “She treats the labs like a nutritionblock, a dash of this and a pinch of that. And her paperwork.” She makes a strangling gesture. “Thank the Council we got Capela. It was just... we couldn’t track  _anything_.”

“Why did she leave?” you ask. “Especially during brooding season. It seems irresponsible.”

Caphir chews her lip, wrapping her arms loosely around herself. “I don’t know the whole story,” she says, watching Alawah instead of looking at you. “But I’ve been here since I was seven, after I finished all the mandatory schoolfeeding. Our Superior before her was by-the-book, you know? Not amazing, but not awful. Vindei - our Superior now - was full-time at the cavern she’s subbing at. It’s huge, the main catchment for the west, three Superiors and nine Daughters just to keep everything running. Something happened there and Vindei got kicked to our backwater joint, and our old Superior got shuffled over there even though this was meant to be an easy starting gig for her.” Caphir shrugs. “Anyway, I heard that a bunch of them got food poisoning, and Vindei already knew enough to hit the ground running there, so.”

“Here we are,” you say, for something to say, and yawn. You haven’t been awake as long as Caphir, but it’s been long enough.

“Here we are,” Caphir agrees, and looks sidelong at you. “Are you gunning for the Superior position?”

“No!” you say, reflexively. After a moment, you realise it’s true. For all that this has been a lot like coming home, you’ve been gone from home too long to make a permanent return comfortable. Your real life is starting to itch at you, and you miss your companions in world-hopping more than you want to admit. “Temporarily helping out is all I aspire to,” you say, firm.

Caphir smiles, weary. “Good, because the waiting list’s a mile long.”

\--

You don’t get much opportunity to stop and think, since Alawah lays her first clutch only a few days after her first induction of slurry, leaving all of you scrambling to keep up. Her first eggs are bright jewels that Nahran cleans reverentially, with the same focus that she gives to her labwork. Almuri and Syrmah are too run-ragged for the same reverence, kept sorting through eggs and finding the warm spots in the brooding cavern for the cooler ones. They need to be shifted regularly, and on top of the duties of keeping the caverns running, it means that none of the Initiates are getting much sleep.

You take a photo of Zaniah passed out, curled around an indigo-blue egg, and send it to Redglare when she asks how things are proceeding. In return, you get a photo of several student legislacerators curled up under blankets in a library, books and husktops strewn over every flat surface. The specifics change, but the bigger picture stays the same.

The routine takes you over quickly, although the equipment is just different enough to give you pause at fist. Still, most of the work doesn’t require tinkering with things you’d rather leave alone, so you turn the eggs and check temperatures and shine lights through shells to track development, and Nahran handles the humidity controls and signs off on the Initiates’ data tracking, and by the time Alawah lays her last clutch you’re all so flat-out with the work and attempting to catch sleep whenever you can that your communications with Redglare taper off, becoming exhausted check-ins rather than anything of substance.

Doubtless, she’s busy as well.

Nahran, nominally in charge of you and better-conditioned to the furious landslide of a schedule that is incubation, is the first to notice your flagging and do something about it. The two of you have the nutritionblock to yourselves for a few precious minutes, with the Initiates finishing up their tasks and Caphir’s shift is likely hiding in sopor for as long as they can. You have, as is your wont, sat down and are refusing to get up, which was admittedly a poor choice given that you need food.

Nahran plonks a bowl down in front of you. “Eat.”

“I-” you begin a protest, not sure where you’d be taking it but curious nonetheless.

“Need to eat.” Nahran rolls her eyes - you hardly notice the different colours now, for all they surprised you a few weeks ago - and sits beside you. “You’re very mysterious and all, but it’s obvious to anyone that you’ve been out of the caverns for sweeps. You’ve been trying to stick to a normal schedule, which would be fine if we weren’t running you off your feet. Eat as much as you can, as fast as you can, and pray to whatever gods you call your own that carbs can replace proper sleep for a month.”

You stare at the bowl of - some sort of rice dish, carbs indeed - and sigh. Being tired also has the unfortunate effect of killing your appetite, but Nahran has a point, so you set yourself to the task of eating. For a moment, you think that Dualscar and Nahran would get on - well, precisely like a hive on fire.

“You could also get me a bowl,” Nahran says, in her helpful tone. “I could only carry one, and I figured I should make my point by talking instead of eating in front of you.”

\--

Checking the eggs with light once a couple of weeks have passed reveals that you’re likely looking at a seventy-six percent or so viability rate - nothing amazing, but not terrible, either. Nahran and Caphir, on the other hand, are ecstatic.

“We haven’t gotten over sixty percent in  _sweeps_!” Nahran says, sweeping one of the eggs into a gentle hug before placing it carefully in a warmer spot near a humidifier vent.

“Sixty?” you ask, a little of your horror leaking into your tone. While eggs are eggs and there’s only so much you can do if a batch turns out to have a low viability rate, your caverns were encouraged to monitor things as closely as possible, and you usually ended up with roughly eighty percent or so viability. A rate as low as sixty, sweep after sweep, would have been staggeringly unacceptable.

“I know,” Nahran says, subdued as she turns the rest of the eggs and rearranges them to her liking. “We’ve checked everything. Nothing in the rock is toxic, the air is purified, the humidifier uses purified water, the slurry has never been contaminated. Our best guess is that Alawah is getting a little old, but still.” She holds an orange egg up to the light and smiles at the dark shape within it. “It’s good to see all of these guys pulling through.”

Caphir, still on duty and herding Syrmah and Almuri through testing the eggs since it takes a while to get through five or six hundred of them, smiles too. Syrmah yawns and keeps working, while Almuri rolls her eyes at the display of emotion.

\--

While your schedule is flat-out, it’s not exactly challenging or exciting. Check the eggs for any further non-viables, record the temperature and humidity, tend to Alawah, then take it from the top - and help Capela in your spare time. Nahran has the worse of it, though; she’s the one actually analysing and comparing your data, emailing reports to the absent Superior, and she’s responsible for Almuri’s and Syrmah’s data collection as well. Caphir handles Khamsa and Zaniah, but Nahran is the one to collate it all.

You’re trying to take some of the load off her shoulders by double-checking Almuri’s data with her at dinner and correcting some of the more egregious typos - the two of you are in agreement that she most likely meant two hundred coolblood eggs, not two thousand, given that if there were two thousand eggs in the cave it would likely be bursting at the seams - when your palmtop goes off.

H34D1NG B4CK, DOLLF4C3. 1 SHOULD B3 TH3R3 WH3N YOU W4K3 UP.

“Is that your legislacerator?” Almuri asks, sitting up to do her best to gawk at your screen.

You flick the screen off and slip the palmtop back into your pocket. “I hardly own her,” you say, but can’t help the smile you feel on your lips. “Now, these candling viable percentages seem at odds with yesterday’s.”

You and Almuri have worked your way through about three-quarters of the daily data when Nahran bursts into the room, still wearing her scrubs. “First pip!”

Almuri jumps up. “I’ll get Khamsa and Zaniah.”

You blink, still holding Almuri’s tablet. You’d lost track of time a bit, certainly, but you didn’t think the eggs would be hatching already. Counting backwards proves otherwise, though it still doesn’t seem quite real. It’s been a while since you first arrived. It’s been a while even since Redglare left, now that you think on it. “What should I be doing?”

“Take a nap,” Nahran says, stretching until her back cracks. She’s finally abandoned the crutches, although Capela - who apparently is a woman of many talents, one of them being some medical training - has insisted on a brace while her ankle is in the final stage of healing. “Caphir’s about to come on anyway, and it’s still going to be a long while before any of the grubs are ready to come out.”

“Are you certain?” you ask, even though now the word ‘nap’ has been said, you’re exhausted. Your night was a lot of running around.

Nahran smiles. “Relax, Aneith. I’ll be doing the same thing, once I hand the reins over.”

Almuri comes back, followed by Zaniah, who makes directly for food. Nahran’s advice of Eat When You Can seems to make an impression on any troll in her presence for long enough. “Khamsa’s getting Caphir,” Almuri tells Nahran, before scooping up her tablet.

“Good,” Nahran says, and collapses into the chair opposite yours. “Now, here’s what we’ve decided to do differently from last sweep.”

\--

You don’t sleep heavily, given the excitement. What wakes you up is Redglare - not the sound of her breathing, or rustling cloth, but the prickling of your skin that you’ve never been able to pin down as something other than the feel of another person in your space. She sits at the small table in the corner, one hand pressed under her chin as she scrolls through her tablet with the other. There are shadows under her eyes and new embroidery on one of her sleeves.

You crawl your way out of the cupe, pay no heed to the sopor slime dripping off you, and wrap your arms around her. She feels like she always has, which is bony, and smells like unfamiliar soap, and your heart lets go of some tension that you didn’t know it was carrying around. She curls her arms around your shoulders in return without hesitation, despite all the slime, and presses her cheek against yours.

“We did have sopor, Dol,” she says, not pulling away. “The stories you have heard about how hardcore advanced legislacerator schoolfeeding is are only three-quarters true.”

“Well, I forgot to get you a welcome back gift,” you say, and peel yourself away with some regret. “Give me five minutes to scrub down, then we can get caught up.”

“There’s certainly catching up to do,” she says, her expression dimming a little. You let it lie, figuring that there will be enough time to talk once you’re not covered in slime.

\--

Once you’ve cleaned up, you and Redglare sit at your small table together and she lays the summary page you gave her before she left between you, pressing it flat against the smooth plastic. Before you can ask any questions, she also pulls a notebook out of her captcha deck and opens it up to a mess of teal-inked maths that makes less than no sense to you, not least because Redglare’s handwriting is uniquely awful.

“I knew where to look after you gave me this,” Redglare says, tapping the summary page. “The numbers for this sweep are  _wildly_  off from recorded trends-”

“Nahran and Caphir said much the same,” you say, the slight suspicion you’ve held your whole time here forming into a lump of dread in your stomach. “The viability rate has always been low, at least.”

Redglare nods. “After you gave me the page, I did some excavating. The official reports on Capela’s account say that, too.” She pauses, and looks up to you. “The unofficial reports don’t.”

You lean back in your chair. “Unofficial reports.”

“Everything I’ve been archiving.” Redglare points at her notebook. “Daily records, jotted down where collating these results would be difficult. Locked spreadsheets, data spread between different files, broken links and typos, basically anything whoever got into these last could do to make it not worth the effort of fixing.”

_Deliberate_. You drum your fingers against the table, your nails falling like guillotines. “And the reports are off.”

“Very off. Look,” Redglare draws a finger along a line of her notebook. “Here I managed to get some real totals for the past few sweeps, and here’s the official statistics beside it. If you break it down by the haemospectrum, the ratio is too perfect for the unviable grubs to occur naturally. Sweep after sweep.”

“You figured this out before you left,” you say, staring at her notebook so that you don’t look at Redglare, who doesn’t seem the slightest bit aware of her betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Redglare takes a deep breath, anchoring herself for her explanation, but then lets it go in a heavy sigh. “Dol, you’re not exactly impartial when grubs are concerned. I didn’t want you to murder someone while I was gone, even if it was deserved. Here.” She turns another page in her notebook. “Resource usage is the same sweep after sweep, and doesn’t dramatically dip with the number of viable eggs. I figured the grubs were safe until they hatched.” She shrugs. “And you would have noticed better than me if something untoward were to happen in the interim.”

Her logic is faultless, of course. Unfortunately, pure logic is generally inapplicable in the real world, with all its messiness. “They’re hatching now,” you bite out, your fingers digging into all of Redglare’s careful statistics. She goes pale, her eyes widening behind red glasses. “If they’re in danger, it’s  _now_.”

The process she goes through in three seconds flat is fascinating. You doubt anyone who isn’t you would see it, but she immediately adjusts her course. Apologising and working through the fact that she didn’t keep you in the loop is needed, but would take too long - so her shoulders straighten, her mouth firms, and her hand rests on her canesword as she gets up. “I went to the legislacerators to make sure I’d have the authority I need,” she says, and offers you a hand up. Your eyes go to the new embroidery over her heart and on her sleeve. “I have it. Let’s go.”

\--

Caphir is still in the brooding cavern when you and Redglare get there, wrapping up her duties to give Nahran a clean slate when her shift starts. Zaniah and Khamsa are there too, scrubbing the cave while carefully ensuring that all the pipped eggs are left alone, and it makes you breathe a little easier to know that none of the jadebloods have been in here without another to watch them.

They could all be conspiring to some purpose, you suppose, but you don’t want to believe it. Still, the world has never bent its whims to your want before, and you doubt it’s going to start doing so now.

“Oh, you came back for the excitement,” Caphir says, when she sees Redglare. “It’s still going to be six hours or so-”

“Good,” Redglare says, briskly, pulling out her notebook. Her other hand never leaves her sword. “Dol, keep an eye on the others.”

Khamsa and Zaniah eye you uneasily. You sit down on an outcropping and return their gaze with impassivity, making yourself seem less threatening. It is, of course, only the seeming, as you have carefully placed yourself between them and the door.

There are a lot of good things about this world that you have had to get used to, but to phrase it as bluntly as possible: this is a soft world. You’re a flavour of murderer that nobody in this universe has ever seen, and has had reason to prepare against you. If they run, you imagine that you could cut them down in the space of a blink.

Redglare’s conversation with Caphir is soft and muttered, an overview of the conversation she had with you, a few pointed questions added. You can tell when it all adds up, because Caphir’s cursing blisters the air.

Khamsa looks at you uncertainly, then at Zaniah. “I don’t even know what half of that meant.”

“I hope you don’t have to find out,” you say, struggling to keep your voice even and calm. It doesn’t work, given the hurt look in Khamsa’s eyes and the way she withdraws, but she’ll understand once everything here has been dragged out into the light. Redglare is leading Caphir your way, so it might even be sooner rather than later.

“I didn’t know,” Caphir pleads as soon as she draws close enough to speak without raising her voice. “I swear- we turn our data over to Nahran, she turns it over to Capela and Vindei, I had  _no idea_  that our records were being falsified-”

“How could you miss the evidence of your own eyes?” you hiss, the dam you were building brick by brick in your mind breaking in a single flood of loathing. “You are  _responsible_  for each and every one of these grubs. I cannot  _believe_  your dereliction of duty.”

Caphir blanches, but then nods jerkily. “I know.”

Zaniah folds her arms. “If you’ve been derelict, then so have we. I don’t know what’s happening, but-”

“No,” Caphir says, her shoulders slumping. “You don’t know, Zan. Khamsa. Someone, somewhere in the chain has been falsifying records to make it seem like we’ve had less viable grubs than we actually hatch, for sweeps now. You’ve just been doing what Nahran and I have told you; any wrongdoing is our responsibility.”

Khamsa looks at you, Redglare, and Caphir, the three adults of the caves. Zaniah is too busy looking horrified. “But... what’s been happening to the grubs?”

Caphir presses her lips together and takes a breath through her nose, keeping the calm that you couldn’t. “We’re going to find out,” she says, her words a grim promise that raises your eyebrows. “But first, we’re going to make sure that this cohort hatches safely.”

\--

Nahran comes into the brooding cavern less than fifteen minutes after your talk. Zaniah and Khamsa have been sent to feed and sleep, although you doubt they’ll do either, and you and Redglare are left to monitor Caphir, and the grubs. She’d be on alert now, of course, but watching Caphir autopilot through her routine, you have slight doubts that she’s done any active work in endangering her grubs. She’s nearly as furious as you are.

“You’re here early,” Nahran says to you as she comes to stand next to Caphir and trade off shifts, and then sees Redglare across the cavern. “Ah. The legislacerator is experiencing the miracle of her first hatch?”

“Nahr,” Caphir says, her voice too artificially concerned. “I was looking at some old reports to see if I could figure out why our viability rate’s been so different this sweep, but I ran into some conflicting data. Help me look it over?”

Nahran accepts Caphir’s tablet, loaded up with one of her own undoctored reports. “This looks like mine,” she says, and toggles the comments. “Yeah, it’s mine, I kept leaving myself notes to review the humidity that sweep, because I thought that was what was causing things to be so low.” She frowns as she remembers. “It seemed to work at first, but then a few of the quicker-developing eggs cut out. I was super pissed.” She shakes her head. “What was up with the numbers?”

“This was the official record of that week,” Caphir says, and switches to said report.

Nahran scrolls, then goes pale. “This is- This isn’t even  _wrong_ , it’s not even in the same  _ballpark_  as our caverns.” Without prompting, she checks the next week, then the next, then the overview, her grip on the tablet getting more white-knuckled and her lips becoming a thinner line as she proceeds. “What is going on with  _my caverns_?” she snarls at the final report, before looking up and pinning you and Caphir with her eyes. Despite yourself, you almost flinch. You didn’t think Nahran got angry. “This is- this data has been fucked with so thoroughly that I might as well throw everything in the freezers out and start again,” she snaps, her voice trembling with the effort of keeping it civil. “Aneith, you and your legislacerator had better have a  _damn_  good explanation.”

“The same could be said to you,” Redglare says, almost genially, as she wanders back towards the three of you. “I understand that you’re in a good position to falsify this data.”

Nahran stares at her, then begins to laugh. It’s not pleasant. “Me?” she finally demands. “Look, this isn’t just data! These are just numbers! Someone’s had to be out here, actually messing with the grubs, and I’ve barely been in here for sweeps! I do all the labwork, Caphir does all the grunt work because we prefer it that way, and this needs to come from  _both_  sides.” She tosses the tablet at the lone desk in the small, cordoned-off work area, the sole place in the cavern the mothergrub can’t get to. There’s a wince-worthy crack, but none of you pay it heed. “Unless you’re suggesting that Caphir and I went through the trouble of colluding to gather and process data that we then completely faked, look elsewhere.”

Just as Nahran’s shouting dies, another crack sounds in the cave.

Nahran pinches her nose. “That wasn’t the tablet, was it?”

Caphir’s already moving to the bank of eggs that was supposed to hatch first. A tiny black claw juts out of it, working steadily at unzipping the egg around its owner. Some frustrated squeaks tell all of you that it is already aggravated at how much effort life takes.

“We need to talk later, Nahr,” Caphir says. She’s at the end of her shift, tired beyond all reason, but you all - with the exception of Redglare, who is hovering awkwardly in the background bereft of someone to arrest - know that once hatching begins, everyone is needed in the caves. It’s going to be a flood of activity until this time tomorrow at the very least, and likely Caphir will sleep when she collapses.

Nahran chews her lip, rolling it between her teeth. “Fine,” she finally says. “The Initiates don’t work without one of us two inches away, though. And Capela stays out. Redglare, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.”

Redglare has never looked so alarmed in all the time you’ve known her.

\--

Hatching grubs is backbreaking work. A lot of it is just waiting, and watching, of course; attempting to help them out of their shells would likely kill them. Still, there are careful adjustments to be made - ensuring that newly-hatched grubs don’t try to eat each other, separating the fragments of shell and bringing them to Alawah to eat and regain some of the reserves that have left her after laying hundreds of eggs, bringing in feed and bedding and carefully changing the locations of eggs that have pipped but are struggling to hatch in order to give them the best chance, and writing everything down. The latter, Nahran does with a storm on her face, barking orders to the Initiates. Almuri and Syrmah, the only two to not know why Nahran and Caphir are angry, work like revenants are chasing them across the desert. Zaniah and Khamsa work silently, equally grim looks on their faces that only break when they’re confronted with newly-hatched grubs that butt their ankles.

You’re not supposed to bond with the grubs you hatch. It’s not supposed to happen, but it does - how could it not? Whoever has endangered - and murdered, being realistic - this cavern’s grubs, sweep after sweep, is likely to find themselves torn limb from limb, with how angry-heartbroken everyone is.

You find yourself in no mood to stop such an outcome.

Despite the darkness that hangs over the cave, there’s still the joy of a hatching. If nothing else, very little can stifle the amusement that comes at Redglare’s complete ineptitude with grubs. One of them in particular takes a liking to her scent and follows in her footsteps no matter what any of you do to corral it. Finally, once it escapes its pen for the fourth time, she picks up the tiny blue bit of a grub and carefully buttons it inside her vest, muttering to nobody in particular about not wanting to prosecute herself for stepping on it.

There is only so long anger can last. Caphir, weary to the bone, cracks first when she starts crying and then excuses herself to go sleep, so worn her emotions are leaking out no matter how hard she tries to stop them. You throw yourself into the work and lose yourself in the routine, your standard way of running. Nahran lasts longer, but exhausts herself with it, finally limping to a seat on the small work dais and collapsing into it. The grubs are all hatched, but none of you have any energy left over for the problem at hand.

Redglare waits, and watches, occasionally scratching softly at the lump in her vest without realising it.

Syrmah and Almuri last the longest, being young and well-rested, but even Syrmah has wound down and is sitting beside you once the work is done and the cave is clean enough that none of the grubs or Alawah are likely to hurt themselves. Almuri circles through the cave, picking up a grub here and putting it down there, rotating the cooler grubs to warmer spots and vice-versa. Finally, most of them are in order, and she goes to Redglare.

“I’ll put her in a warm spot, if you want,” she says, holding up her hands for Redglare to deposit her admirer in. “It’ll be better than hiding in your clothes.”

“Her?” Redglare asks. Almuri shrugs. Redglare stares down at her, eyes hidden behind her glasses as her mind ticks, and then says, “She’s asleep. I’ll get Dol to show me when she wakes up.”

Almuri frowns, but then it’s gone almost before it started. “Suit yourself.”

“You may as well go get some food,” Redglare says, smiling authority in her voice. Almuri doesn’t have to obey her - doesn’t have to obey anyone other than Nahran and Caphir, or the Superior - but you can practically see her spine bending under the weight of Redglare’s words. “Take your time. Bring some back for us.”

“Sure,” Almuri says, voice dripping uncertainty. “Syrmah?”

Syrmah picks herself up off the floor beside you. “ _Food_ ,” is all she says, although it’s with whole-hearted feeling behind it, and the two Initiates leave.

“You think-?” you ask Redglare, once the door hisses shut behind them.

“I think,” Redglare says, grim. “Walk the rounds with me, Dol.”

Almuri hasn’t been the brightest of the Initiates, by a long shot. Even the worst of Initiates that have been through a hatching should know how to arrange new-hatched grubs properly, and your expression tenses back into the scowl you’ve been carrying all night when you realise what a hash she’s made of the placements. Then you realise it’s not as haphazard as it seems.

The grubs nearest where you were sitting up against the dais are placed fine, and have mostly gone to sleep to recover from the trauma of hatching. Further back, towards where Redglare was pacing, the grubs are placed mostly well - but in the darker shadows, there are grubs of all castes mixed together, peeping near-inaudibly and digging at their bedding to either cool down or warm up.

Where you wouldn’t see, you realise, your temper flaring. You ball your hands into fists and breathe through the pain of your nails knifing into your palms, trying to vent your anger without hurting anything other than yourself. Where only Redglare, not a jadeblood and more competent at guarding rather than caretaking, would see.

You pick them up, grub by grub, with shaking hands, and relocate them to more comfortable places. Nahran, who has overexerted herself, levers herself out of her seat and limps around to help you as she puts together the pieces. You’re all too tired to be as angry as you were, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be angry.

“Did you and Redglare come here because of this?” Nahran asks, the gentleness of her hands as she settles a jade grub down in amongst its compatriots not affected in the least by the dull rage in her voice.

You pause to consider. You’re not entirely sure about your stance on coincidences in this world, but, well, you knew nothing about the situation when you accepted the invitation. “No,” you finally say. “I had no idea.”

“Tell me about Almuri,” Redglare says, changing the topic before Nahran can question you further.

Nahran’s mouth twists as she shrugs. “What can I tell you? I was going to recommend that she leave the caverns, after this season. She wasn’t really picking up the work and kept making simple mistakes, which was why she got placed with me.” Not looking at either of you, she gently shoos a purple grub into a small nest of bedding before it falls asleep where it stands. “I’m not as patient as Caphir with mistakes, working in the lab so much. Now I’m suspicious that they weren’t mistakes, that she might’ve been feeding me shitty data. There’s no proof, though.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Redglare says, surprisingly gentle. “I’ve got all the proof I need, once I can go through it all.”

“Then why ask me?” Nahran asks, leaning a hand against the wall as she straightens. The beads in her hair click, muffled by her cap. “Either you’re going to convict her or you’re not. My opinion doesn’t matter. The crime does.”

Redglare sighs, and then, to your surprise, takes off her glasses. “I’m one person, Nahran,” she says, and like that Nahran’s image of Redglare, Legislacerator cracks a little. Enough to see her as a person, instead of a role. “I have destroyed lives in chasing criminals, before. I’d rather not do it again.”

Nahran slowly limps her way to Alawah’s side, favouring her ankle more than she really should be, at this point. “You’re the first legislacerator I’ve known to have moral conundrums,” she says, gently stroking Alawah. Alawah sleeps, sated on egg remains and unaware that anything is wrong. “You’re going to tear this cavern apart no matter what, once this is exposed.” She sighs, and droops, her head against Alawah’s side. “Almuri had the opportunity to make sure that false data got in the right places. I used her as a runner more than anything. She can’t have been working alone, though, she doesn’t have the privileges to be in here unsupervised. The door wouldn’t let her in.”

Redglare’s eyebrows raise. “Does the door keep a log?”

“Of course,” Nahran says, and laughs bitterly without looking at either of you. “It’s cleared every season.”

You bite back a curse. Redglare looks as if she’s swallowing a lemon, but the both of you manage to keep it to yourselves.

“It had to be Vindei.” Nahran gives Alawah a final scratch before turning back to the two of you, new purpose in her stance. “If it wasn’t Caphir or me, it had to be Vindei. With how much she fucked up the records, and how we’ve bounced back while she’s gone...” Nahran shakes her head.

“You’ll testify to that in court?” Redglare asks, utterly failing to conceal the hungry eagerness in her tone.

Nahran snorts. “I’ll testify to it in a brothel, if you want. After these grubs come through.”

\--

You stay and work through to when Caphir wakes up again, although once the grubs fall asleep there’s not much work to be done. Redglare’s blueblood stays cozied up in her vest, even though Redglare’s warmth is probably uncomfortably cool for her. You even manage to convince Nahran to sit down, although she stares off into the distance with a dark look on her face for most of the time.

It ends when Caphir dashes into the room, scrubs askew and cap at an angle that might be called ‘rakish’, synonymous with ‘only just hygienic’. “Vendei’s on her way back!” she yelps, dancing between two migrating orangebloods. “Capela just got the message -  _augh, careful_  - that her hatching’s done and the cavern doesn’t need her, so she’s on her way here!”

“Good,” Nahran says, her tone matching the looks that have been setting her computer on fire all night, and quickly explains where suspicions currently lie.

Caphir looks uncertainly at Redglare. “What are you going to do? She’ll be here in four hours!”

Redglare hauls herself to her feet, balancing with her sword. “I’m going to go make sure that we’re prepared. I’ll see you in three and a half hours.” Without any further ado, she gestures you towards the door. You smother a hiss - you’re stressed, and while you have reason to be angry she kept things from you, you don’t want an argument while you’re this tired and there are more important things to tackle first. Sweeps of being cooped up in the same room as three moulting pupae has taught you the futility of arguments coming from being at the end of your tether.

“What  _can_  you do?” you ask her once you’re back in your respiteblock.

She’s already curled up in a chair beside the small table, tablet in front of her and feet tucked at her side. As she scrolls through documents, she looks like a headache personified. “I’m going to follow what documentation I can find that correlates with Almuri being the last to handle it, and I’m going to find something that connects Vindei and Almuri,” she says, pushing her glasses up and grinding her palms into her eyes. “And I’m going to have some coffee.”

You perch in the seat across from her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Ah,” Redglare says, and lowers her hands until they loosely rest atop each other on the table. “I was a Neophyte on Alternia, Dol. They recognised that rank here, although it was a lot more limited. And the only reason I had as much freedom as I did was because I was chasing Mindfang, and they loved to see me fail. But it was a low rank.”

Your heart sinks. “You can’t do anything.”

“No, not at all,” Redglare says. “I was reinstated at Neophyte. And then I read some books, I tutored some cadets, I took some exams, and somehow thanks to centuries-old statutes this filled my obligations and they made me Judiciar.” Someone else would have missed the tremble in her hands. She raises them palm up before you can comment. “Perhaps the world is saying that I should do this. Perhaps it’s a perk of saving the universe. But I didn’t earn it, Dol. Not properly.” She looks away from you, scratches the embroidery on her sleeve. “How long has it been? I’m still the same idiot Neophyte who got suckered by Spinneret Mindfang. But now I can do ‘anything I deem needful’.”

You sit back in your chair, throw your arm over it, and look at her. It hurt more than you want to admit, that she left you ignorant and took away your chance to act. But she’s been trapped in tangles of her own making, and it’s not unthinkable that she let you get tangled up too.

You close your eyes. “Yes, you’re still that same Neophyte who rushed headlong into bad situations without thinking them through,” you say, wryly. “That’s why you’ve planned ahead, and why you went to get what you need to do this properly, and why you’re going to stay awake for the next four hours combing through puzzle pieces to make sure that you don’t make a mistake.” When you open your eyes again, Redglare is staring at you, rare colour on her cheeks. “I’m still upset you left me in the dark,” you say. “But I understand why you did it. So long as you remember that I’m on your side in future, I won’t hold it against you.”

Redglare nods, minutely, and you see her swallow like a knife is stuck in her throat.

Reaching over, you take her hands. “Tell me how to help, Judiciar.”

\--

It goes almost too smoothly after that. With Redglare’s preliminary research, the two of you are able to find enough evidence of Almuri and Vindei colluding to falsify the records, which is enough for Redglare to be satisfied of their guilt. Lacking a convenient jail cell, neither of you alert Almuri to her impending doom.

Caphir is the most likely vector of alarm, given that once you meet back up with her, she vibrates with worry at a frequency you can practically hear. Redglare, evincing no sign she was nearly as worried a few hours ago, does a remarkable job of calming her with a brief explanation of the plan, but given the plan is ‘sit down Superior Vindei and have a friendly talk,’ it’s not as calming as it could be.

It feels almost like it’s happening to someone else when a tall, muscular jadeblood in Superior dress steps into the brooding cavern. Everybody is there, excluding Capela, who can’t leave the desk, and the sick Initiates, who you don’t think know anything is happening, let alone something of this magnitude.

“Ah,” Vindei says, regretful, as she looks around the cave. “I was hoping to return in time.”

“Just missed it!” Nahran says, with brittle good cheer. “Superior, let me introduce you to Aneith. She’s been helping out in your absence, and so has her matesprit, Redglare.”

You smile and reach over to shake her hand, your other hand occupied with herding Redglare’s blueblood. Vindei clasps your hand briefly and nods, before turning to Redglare and flinching slightly. “Judiciar,” she says, as she shakes Redglare’s hand. “I wouldn’t have thought your duties allowed time for assistance in the caverns.”

“One finds work wherever they go,” Redglare says, cheerfully. Her other hand, concealed in a pocket, flashes out like lightning, and she claps a cuff around Vindei’s wrist. The other cuff is already locked around hers. At the same time, Caphir grabs Almuri by the collar and twists an arm up behind her back, immobilising the Initiate. “Tell me about your paperwork, Vindei,” she says, just as cheerfully. Almuri looks about to throw up, although it might just be Caphir’s hold.

“My paperwork?” Vindei asks, notes of disbelief and surprise in her voice. If nothing else, she’s a good actress. “I admit, I’ve never taken well to it - we had to get someone in to fix things up - but I wasn’t aware it was causing problems of the sort a Judiciar would have to resolve. Filing cabinets would have done the trick, I believe.” She tries to raise her wrist, only to find that Redglare’s muscles are braided steel cabling, and she only moves the length of the chain. “Surely we can talk it over.”

“Oh yes,” Redglare agrees, and pulls her tablet out. “Can you account for the discrepancies in official and actual hatch rates for the past five sweeps?”

“Daughters Nahran and Caphir must have told you that, unfortunately, not all of our eggs hatch,” Vendei says through gritted teeth. “Come now, legislacerator, if you’ve formed some misleading ideas based on assumptions-”

Redglare skims down her tablet. “I’ll mark that as a ‘No’. Now, according to daily logs kept by Daughter Nahran last sweep, at the end of hatching there were five hundred and thirty-six healthy grubs. Yet, your report to the Council states five hundred-ten, even. What happened to the other twenty-six grubs?”

Vendei scoffs. “Really, a clerical error- I believe Initiate Almuri was responsible for sending me the numbers, do ask her.”

Redglare sighs and tucks her tablet away. Then, before Vendei can process what she’s doing, she wraps her hand around the handcuff chain and yanks. Vendei stumbles, and Redglare brings her close, keeping her balanced on her toes, about to fall without Redglare keeping her upright. “Sweeps of doctored reports,” Redglare says, the fury in her voice bubbling to surface. “No means or motive for the others with access. Archives of Trollian messages, transferring files back and forth. And a door opening when it shouldn’t have,  _couldn’t_  have, Superior. You can confess or not; you know it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll submit my  _report_ -” she grins a blade of a grin, the sharpness of her teeth just showing through, “-and the world will carry on. But if you think I am being irrational, perhaps you would rather appeal to your cohort.”

Vindei looks at all of you that she can see and recoils. The general consensus still seems to be ‘evisceration’.

Redglare twists her collar. “What happened. To. The  _grubs_?”

“I sold them!” Vindei gasps, staggering on tiptoes. “Grubjelly, it’s a delicacy- Judiciar, please-”

Redglare’s eyes seem just as flat and cold as the glasses that cover them. Behind you, you hear Zaniah retching. “It must be awful, to be helpless at the hands of someone with absolute power over you,” she says, with no emotion in her voice. Part of your heart is singing,  _end her end her end her,_ but you ruthlessly force it back. Whether for better or worse, you’re not on Alternia anymore, and you can’t be who you used to be.

“You can’t,” Vindei begs, prying at Redglare’s fingers with her free hand, her legs still too occupied with trying to find footing to try to kick her way free. “You’re not going to  _kill_  me-”

“Oh, I could,” Redglare says. “Perfectly legal. Fortunately for you, legal is not the same as just.” A flicker of something - uncertainty? - crosses Redglare’s face. Then she firms her resolve. “You’ll go to trial. You’ll be granted representation of your own, though I assure you they’ll despise you. And, instead of ending your harm, I will make you  _repay_ it.” Bereft of any kinder method, she sucker-punches the Superior, knocking her unconscious, before moving her restraint to a convenient hole worn in the wall of the cavern.

“Um,” Almuri says, in a squeak. “Um, she told me to-”

“ _You_  shut up,” Caphir says, giving her a shake. “If it’s true, it’ll all come out, won’t it?”

\--

Two Neophytes come out to take custody of Vendei and Almuri. Redglare chats to them at a distance, thumbs hooked in her waistband and a look you’ve never seen on her face. She looks... proud, maybe. You think you recognise the look from your own face, in moments when your grubs startled you with how competent and compassionate they are. One of the Neophytes salutes her with a flick of his fingers when they leave, and a smile haunts Redglare’s face, even if it disappears in an instant.

The lot of you are tired, not that that’s anything new after clawing your way through hatching season. Nahran and Caphir won’t leave the grubs, after hearing Vindei’s confession, so you all gather in the brooding cavern despite it being the scene of the showdown.

Redglare’s grub comes up to her almost immediately, squeaking fury, having escaped her pen again. They weren’t exactly built escape-proof, but nor do most grubs try to crawl to freedom so persistently. She scoops the grub into her lap and lets it bite her finger.

“I think this one was marked by them,” Redglare says, and wriggles her finger. The grub latches onto it with her foreclaws immediately. “Not many ceruleans in this batch.”

“No,” you agree, gently attempting to detach the grub from Redglare. “Not that she seems grateful. Look, she can see now,” you say, waving your fingers in front of the grub’s eyes. She tracks them and swipes at them with her foreclaws. “Her horns must be growing in by now, too...” you trail off as you carefully part the mop of fine hair on top of her grub’s head. “No,” you finally say, in stunned disbelief. “No, it-”

“What?” Redglare says, ready to spring into action to keep the grub safe.

“These growth patterns,” you say, faintly. “Hook and crescent. She’s a scorpio.”

Redglare looks at you, then down at the grub. “No,” she agrees with you.

You pass a hand over your face. You’re too tired for this. “It’s not- it’s not  _her_ ,” you say, lamely. “I mean, it can’t be. She’s trapped between worlds, even if resurrection or reincarnation existed there’s nothing to reincarnate  _from_.”

“Just a scorpio,” Redglare agrees, faintly. “A  _new_  scorpio.” Her mouth twitches, and then she starts cackling. “A new scorpio that I saved from becoming grubjelly!”

“ _We_  saved,” you say, primly.

“Heroically,” Redglare adds. “In a few sweeps she’s going to  _hate_  us.”

Nahran finds the two of you still laughing as she walks around the cave, limping less after having rested her ankle for a bit. “Oh, is she bothering you?” she asks, and deftly removes your poor, be-destinied scorpio from Redglare’s finger before either of you can even begin to explain the joke, putting her back with her brethren. “Caphir told me before you weren’t interested in staying,” she says to you, once you and Redglare have managed to calm down.

“No,” you say, still a little surprised to find it true. Redglare leans a little against your shoulder, imperceptible support. “This was... interesting,” you say, wresting a wry smile from Nahran. “But I imagine my hive is likely on fire by now. I should go home.”

“Well, if it’s burned down.” Nahran shrugs a shoulder. “You’re welcome here. Apparently I get to call those shots, now. Caphir and I flipped a coin.”

“Thank you,” you say, and mean it. Nahran gives you a half smile and waves as she slowly makes her way to the rest of the jadebloods. Maybe the place got a little cracked as you and Redglare held it upside down and shook, but you imagine she’ll spackle it up well enough.

“I remember  _someone_  promising me we could burn down the countryside on the way back,” Redglare says, lacing her grub-bitten fingers through yours.

Home. You’re ready, now. You feel a little more like you belong to this world.

“Well,  _if_  you find a dragon,” you say, and climb to your feet. 


End file.
